Re: Your Help Appreciated

John Mietus <sirchuck@...> wrote:

>Thanks for the lesson. I said I was learning! Yes, I meant /T/ and /D/ (I'm
>still deciphering the ASCII-IPA encodings without the benefit of someone
>actually vocalizing them for me, so I apologize for the confusion)

Just in case, the main ASCII-IPA encodings are detailed in
    http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html

And here's a page where you can hear the sounds of IPA (you'll
have to convert IPA to ASCII-IPA and viceversa, of course). You
can even download a program with the IPA chart:
    http://www.jaars.org/CCS/SoftDev/Language/IPAhelp/ipahelp.htm

>Primarily orthographic. The  <kth> would be something like the orthographic
><cth> cluster I've seen in some Greek words, though I admit I only use it in
>a couple of words out of my 1900 roots.

The sound usually transliterated <th> in Greek may be a fricative
(like English hard <th>, /T/) or an aspirated stop (aspirated t, /t_h/)
according to the time. I guess your <th> is as in English. But in
either case, <kth> would be two sounds, /k/ + /T/; you can have a
single letter representing them (like <x> for /ks/), but it's not
a good idea to include orthographic conventions in a phonological
description.

Same for the other sounds. For example:

<sh> = /S/
<j> = /j/ as in "yet" or /dZ/ as in "jet"?
<ch> = /tS/
<zh> = /Z/
<ng> = /N/
<kh> if it's like German or Scots <ch>, then /x/.

>>> /sh/, /b/, /j/, /w/, /z/, /ch/, /h/, /zh/, /wh/, /rh/, /kw/, /kh/, /gw/,
>>> /kth/, /vh/, /ng/
If <r> is trilled and <rh> is not, what is it? A flap, as in
Spanish and Japanese? An approximant as in English?

What is <wh>?

For <kw> and <gw>, it may be that they are really pairs, /k/ or /g/
+ /w/, or labialized stops (that's e.g. /k/ with rounded lips), or
labiovelar stops (e.g. /k/ and /p/ pronounced at the same time).

>Yes, a non-nasal /m/ where the lips do not actually touch.

Then that's /B/, in IPA "beta": a voiced bilabial fricative.

>>> The vowels, again, in order of frequency, are:
>>> /e/, /a/, /o/, /E/, /&/, /I/, /i/, /u-/, /U/, /u/
>>
>> Is /u-/ IPA barred u (high central rounded)?
>
>I believe so -- is that how you show the "oo" sound in "book"? That was my
>intent.

That's /U/, I guess in most dialects of English. Or did you
mean an unrounded u, as in Japanese? (people, what's the IPA
for that?).

Your system is a bit asymmetric -- you have tense and lax versions
of /i/-/I/, /u/-/U/, /e/-/E/, but not /o/-*/O/. Not a problem, I
guess -- you can make */O/ > /a/ in the past stages of the lang,
or something like that.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  "... When all men on earth think, day and night, about the
   Zahir, which one will be a dream and which one a reality?"
                              Jorge Luis Borges, _The Zahir_